Marco Haverkort, whose research straddled the boundaries of theoretical syntax and neurolinguistics, died on May 3, 2006 in the Nijmegen University hospital. Marco had been diagnosed with brain cancer about 8 years earlier, but while his condition remained stable he was able to carry on his teaching and research for many years. Although Marco never failed to discuss his condition bravely and optimistically, it gradually became clear that this battle could not be won. A cremation service was held on May 9 in Nijmegen, attended by family, friends and many colleagues from all over the Netherlands.

I met Marco in 1983, when we were both undergraduate students in Nijmegen. Marco was a brilliant student, who knew the ins and outs of Government and Binding theory and distributed unpublished manuscripts from MIT. His MA-thesis was an impressive study on parasitic gaps, and he published a review of the philosophical aspects of Chomsky's Knowlegde of Language with Philip Miller (Revue Internationale de Philosophie 41, 449-457). Before taking up his graduate studies in Tilburg, Marco spent time at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (a place he would continue to visit regularly) and at MIT. Between 1988 and 1992 Marco held a graduate position in Tilburg (leading to his 1993 dissertation Clitics and Parametrization), but he spent half of his time at the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he became subsequently employed in the year 1992-1993. He then moved to Berkeley (1993-1994) and to the Child Language Program of the University of Kansas, Lawrence (1994-1995), and ultimately the Boston University Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures (from 1995 on). Here he supervised many PhD-dissertations and acted as faculty advisor to the BU Conference on Language Development.

Around 1998 it became clear that Marco was interested in returning to Europe, and we were happy to welcome him at the University of Groningen, where Marco was able to pursue his interests in experimental linguistics and neurolinguistics. With Laurie Stowe and Frans Zwarts he authored the important article ''Rethinking the neurological basis of language'' (Lingua 115, 997-1042). In 2001 Marco obtained a prestigious Academy of Sciences grant which moved him back to Nijmegen, where his career had started.

In his research, Marco moved from theoretical syntax, via first language acquisition, to neurolinguistics. He was highly critical of his own work, but a fruitful and judicious collaborator. Faculty and students of the institutes where Marco worked remember him with fondness. He was an inspiring teacher, a meticulous researcher, and a generous and highly active supervisor.